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Friday, 7 October 2011

Its been a little while since my last Blog, I got rather busy for a while helping Battlefront Miniatures get ready for their first Official European Flames of War Grand Tournament, the family even managed a week away in Scotland mid September, which was a nice break. We are currently having some building work done to the house, which means that I have had to spend most of my time at home over the last two weeks, we still have about three weeks of work, depending on weather of course, but I have managed to get loads of painting done and at least manged to get out to a couple of show's. Although the mess is starting to get on the nerves, thank goodness is keeping fine, we would be just one large mud bath should it throw it down.

The Flames of war GT went very well, held over the weekend of 3rd and 4th September, 102 tickets were sold, not bad for the first one, 98 actual attendees over the weekend, not too bad as you usually expect to lose a few players for various reasons. I along with Steve Nolan went down to Battlefronts Nottingham warehouse on the Friday lunchtime of the 3rd Sept to load up and then onto the university to help set up the tables for the weekend. Steve, Laurie Stewart and myself were assisting with the running of the GT over the weekend, and I even got to play two games as 'player x' on the Sunday.

I managed a visit to Maelstrom Games on Sunday 17th September where Tempus Fugitives were holding another of their WFB campaign weekends, I try to get to each of the Fugitives events to offer a little morale support, in fact they have another coming up on 22nd and 23rd October, a 40K campaign weekend, The Age of the Emperor, which looks like its going to be a good event. I shall be there for a couple of hours on the Saturday afternoon as COGS has organised a small interclub event with 'KiA' Kirby in Ashfield gaming club and it is only 5 minutes away form Maelstrom Games, so I can get to both, then back on the Sunday afternoon for the last couple of hours.

The weekend after, 25th September saw Games Workshops Games Day upon us once again, I was there on the GCN stand along with the rest of the GCN council. It was a very busy show, (see Games Workshop's web site and Youtube for more show details and Golden Demon entries etc). I did not buy much, a couple of new books from Black Library and the BluRay version of the Ultramarine movie, however it seemed to be a very good show.

If I am completely honest I was totally gobsmacked at how busy we ended up being on the GCN stand, I was quite hoarse and very nearly losing my voice late afternoon with all the talking. We had a load of new club inquiries and a few old GCN clubs wanting to get back into the network, all great news.

I went along to Derby university on the 2nd October to the Old Glory World Wargames show held at Derby university. The show is a full weekend and I was originally supposed to be running a participation game along with a couple of my other COGS club member, however as I had been out for virtually ever Sunday for the previous month I decided that to stop all the 'ear ache' from the wife to only go for a visit on the Sunday. Due to various reasons I had not been able to get to this show since around 2006 so I was well overdue for a visit.

It was a decent show, it had some good games on offer and a good number of traders, I went with a shopping list of FoW Blisters, and managed to get everything I wanted along with some other bits and pieces and some really nice bargains on reference books. The only problem with this show is that its the week after Games Day, but that is how it is unfortunately.

Some good news from this show is that I spoke to the editor of Miniature Wargames magazine and they have agreed to have GCN clubs listed in their magazine, so along with White Dwarf, Wargames Illustrated the GCN has club listings in all the major wargames mags in the UK.

While I think about it, some of you may have noticed that the GCN club listing were not in the September or Octobers Wargames illustrated, don't worry we were 'bumped' due to last minute advertising space being required, we should be back in for November all being well.

Oh yes, while on the topic of Wargames Illustrated, I am still waiting for clubs to submit a 'spotlight' article for their club, its a good job I wrote three articles to get us started, had I not done that we would be in the position of not having anything to print, which is not good.

C'mon guy's get those articles to me ASAP, 250 to 300 words about your club, emphasis on the historical side of gaming please, with half a dozen pictures if at all possible.